Bústaður í Eingjartoftum, Sandavági

Abstract

The present paper deals with the results of an archaeological investigati >n, made in 1956, of a settlement in a place called i Eingjartoftum, Sandavágur (Vágar), situated high in the cultivated area (fig. 1). In 1917, close by, was found a runic stone with the inscription: borkæl onondarsun austmabr of ruhalande bygbe bena s(t)ab fyst, by BrøndumsNielsen3 dated to about 1200, and besides, from tíme to time small Hnds have been made hereabout (fig. 2).

Fig. 3 shows sections of the place where according to the finder's account in 1956 the runic stone was situated, and of the sites above. The latter turned out to consist of 2 rooms, or rather houses (tig. 4), as there can be no doubt that the methods of construction employed were quite different, so in their origin they cannot be of the same age although after the construction of house I they were used simultanes ously. House I (fig. 5) is 6 m in length, 3 m across, oriented NE—SW, with 1 — 1,5 m thick walls of rough stones and stone slabs placed edgeways (fig. 6, right), with rubble mainly consisting of pebbles. House II (fig. 7),
6,5 m in length, 2,35 m across, oriented NW—SE, perpendicular to the other, has 0,75—1,5 m thick walls of piled boulders, with rubble of earth and pebbles. Above the eastern longitudinal wall of house I is running a passage nicely paved with stone slabs, to the east limited by a stone wall built up against a moraine hill situated on a glaciated rock. Owing to the rather considerable difference of height between the passage and the floor (the latter partly paved with stone clabs, too) in house I, a flight of steps has been made inside the entrance of the eastern longitudinal wall, fig. 6.

Immediately north of the steps there had been a fireplace, of which only the bottom was left In house II there had been a fireplace by the northern wall, no doubt the original one, and another by the noithern part of the south wall, probably dating from a later use of the house, as it seemed to be placed on the earlier floor deposits (fig. 8).

The houses have been pulled down, and the stone materials of the walls filled in between the foundation stones of the walls, nearly the only ones preserved. Glazed fragments of earthen vessels among the stones seem to indicate that this took place in the 16th century16 (list of finds, house I, 3, 6).

Both the method of building and tínds of earthen vessels of Viking Age type (list of finds, house II, 11, 17, 18)5 in house II seem to show that this one is the oldest, probably early Middle Ages, and that house I must have been added in a later period.10 The method of building, which in these islands, till now, is only known from 13th and 14th centuries, and the complete absence in this house of earthen vessels or other finds which can be older than 13th century, more likely from 14th or 15th century, may prove this (house I, 7 and II, 8, 9, 10, 13).l l On the other hand, finds of the same type in both houses are showing that they were inhabited simultaneously in later period. There can be no doubt about the fact that types of houses and finds are mediaeval, and at any rate there is nothing speaking against the assumption that this is the settlement of borkæl onondarsun, or rather
part of it, and that he placed the runic stone close to his house as a documentation that he was the first person who in the Middle Ages built, if not the village of Sandavágur, at any rate just this place.